About Michael

Michael is one of Australia's highest profile psychologists working in all form of media. He works at Corporate and Personal Consulting in Melbourne.as well as at Innowell - a collaboration between PWC and the University of Sydney. He is a columnist for Huffington Post Australia, Pacific Publications' Girlfriend Magazine, as well as a regular columnist for Lights Out. He has worked in the area of health psychology, bullying, parenting adolescents and adolescent mental health. Michael has been the Consultant Psychologist to the Victorian Secondary Schools Principal's Association, Australian Boarding Staff Association, the Australian Ballet School, St Catherine's and Melbourne Girls College, the Catholic Education Office, Lauriston Girls School, and The Australian Boarding Schools Association.

In 2003 he was one of the founding members of the National Coalition Against Bullying and became one of their national spokespersons. He currently chairs the NCAB Digital Literacy Sub-committee. He also served on the advisory committee for the Federal Government's Boys' Education Lighthouse School Programme. In 2006 he conducted Australia’s largest survey on internet bullying, with over 13,000 respondents and he designed and conducted a study with the AFL Players Association on depression in elite AFL players. He currently sits on the Federal Government’s internet safety Consultative Working Group.

In 1985, he founded the world's first national teenage cancer patients support group, Canteen - The Australian Teenage Cancer Patient's Society. Michael has worked in private practice as a child psychologist academic, researcher and he spent four years working as a political lobbyist.

Michael has been the recipient of a number of awards including the Australian Jaycees Outstanding Young Australian of the Year (1987), the New Zealand Commemoration Medal for Services to the Community (1990), and named Paul Harris Fellow by Rotary International in recognition of his work in the prevention of youth suicide (1997).

In October 2004 Michael was recruited by the Saxton speakers bureau and is now rated as one of their most sought after and successful speakers. Contact Saxton if you would like Michael to speak at your event.

“Young people may only be 17% of the population, but they are 100% of the future.”

Apart from establishing the teenage cancer patient’s society (Canteen), Michael was also the driving force behind the political lobbying effort to establish the Smoke Free Environments Act in New Zealand, the toughest legislation in public health history at the time. He was also the inaugural Executive Director of the New Zealand Drug Foundation.

Michael established Australia’s first ever-Graduate Diploma in Adolescent Health and Welfare, in the Department of Paediatrics at the University of Melbourne. In 2002/3 he and Dr Lena Sanci conducted a national training program with the Australian Division of General Practice (DR Link) training GP’s how to communicate with and assess young people.

In 2004 Michael ran a nationwide training program for the Australian Principals Centre on Identifying the Student at Risk. He is one of the founding members of the National Coalition Against Bullying and has led the charge in Australia on Boys Education and Middle school reform and is now a leading authority on young people and bullying and the internet. He has acted as a consultant on bullying at Trinity Grammar School and Cranbrook in Sydney and helped write the bullying policy for Newington College. He is a member of the National Centre Against Bullying and chairs the cybersafety committee.

CLINICAL SUPERVISION

Michael has been supervising students at Monash University for the past four years in the Postgraduate Diploma in Psychology and in 2006 was asked to lecture by Dr Gordon Walker. He has supervised clinical psychologists Dr Melinda Millar, Lucinda Sharp and School Psychologists Lydia Bronovic (St Catherine’s), Tracey Benton (Melbourne Girls College), Renee Carter (Bendigo Senior Secondary), Rozalia Hecht (Boardwalk School), and Emma Steer (Melbourne Girls & Lauriston).